by Nick Braker
“--were not complete and she wanted live data in lieu--”
“--of theoretical data provided by the computer--”
“--simulation. She could only obtain the information--”
“--by--”
She stopped their conversation.
“What is it?” she asked, noticing Brock and Warren had followed her to the ramp.
Brock stood there, mouth agape.
“You two are both major freaking eggheads.”
“Why, thank you,” they both said together, laughing.
Alara came up behind Brock, gently touching his shoulder.
“Tell Magnus I cannot go any further. My presence would only endanger your chances of success. I will join you shortly in France. If you succeed.”
“Aren’t you worried the feds will come after you?” Brock asked.
“Your president is focused on the danger in France right now. I will be fine here. I know how to anticipate them,” she said, winking.
Brock nodded though his expression was mixed with emotions. Seph disengaged from Grep, moving to stand in front of Alara.
“Do I know you?” Seph asked.
“We met many years ago. I doubt you remember me,” Alara answered.
“I never forget anyone.”
“We should catch up when you get back. I’m sure there are things Father will let me tell you,” Alara said. “Everything will be fine, I promise.”
Seph gasped. That phrase was significant. It had meaning but she just couldn’t remember why. How was that possible? She could remember everything in her life.
“Let’s go,” Grep told her.
Seph nodded, grabbing hold of Grep’s arm and hugging it close to her. They started toward engineering. The last thing she heard was Brock’s comment about Uranus and aliens. She hit the comm-system switch, staring back at Alara.
“Mira, we are ready to go. Would you raise the ramp? I,” she paused. “Forgot.”
“Girl, where is your head? I wonder how you could have forgotten such a thing.”
Mira was certainly holding back her laughter but she assumed it was due to Grep’s presence. What was it about this raven-haired woman? Alara waved to each of them and then turned to enter the facility.
Chapter 26
THE PORTAL
Earth - Atlantic Ocean
The shields protected his ship from Earth’s atmosphere, giving them nearly unrestrained speeds. This would be their first trip with the ship in perfect working order. Magnus shifted positions in his command chair.
What would happen though if those shields dropped?
They had dropped several times before. Granted that had happened in the near vacuum of space, but here, flying just above the ocean, it could mean their instant destruction. Right? He shifted again but this time focused his thoughts on the mission. They were all here, trying to stop an attack on Earth by an alien race that had worked several years for this moment. Why were the aliens trying to destroy them? Did any of them really understand what was going on? He consoled himself with knowing that being here simply felt right. Fate had once again placed the lives of others in his hands and this time it was the lives of everyone on Earth. This was exactly where he should be but that still didn’t make it easy. Magnus rubbed the back of his neck in an attempt to ease the tension in his muscles.
The screens in front of him showed all possible views around the ship. A rear view screen showed a trail of super-heated steam in the ship’s wake. A forward view showed the Atlantic extending to the horizon. Currently, the ship was somewhere over the ocean in route to France and the research facility that housed the wormhole device. Given their current speed and distance, they were only minutes from their destination.
What was he going to find when he got there? Would he be able to stop this threat to Earth? Would he even be able to determine a course of action to take? Magnus shook his head, trying to clear it. This must be a scaled down version of what Grep goes through. His augmented brain presented Magnus with one question after another, yet answers to those questions were far fewer in comparison. He sighed. The silence inside the ship drowned out his thoughts. He blinked several times at the realization that no one had spoken since leaving the WSO facility in D.C. The forward view screen showed the Atlantic had already faded from sight. The rolling blue water was gone, now replaced by a blur of land.
“How long?” Magnus said, breaking the spell of silence.
“Ten seconds.” Jules told him, looking back at him from her console. “Three..., two..., one....”
The sky darkened as they approached. Gray and black clouds filled the area ahead, increasing the gloominess already present in his crew. The alien threat created an enormous hurricane-like storm ahead of them. It should be morning here in France but there was nothing he could find to verify that, only darkness below created by near-blackness above. The sun made no appearance through the thick, dark storm clouds.
The ship flew even closer to the ground now, perhaps a few hundred feet. He glanced over to Jules’ console, reading 250 feet above the ground. Jules’ remarkable ability to fly this ship was unparalleled. Simply reflecting on that, the tension faded as he leaned back in his command chair. The blur from the view screens was gone now but the normal scene he expected on them was replaced instead with chaos. Massive streaks of lightning sliced across the swirling sea of dark gray. Erratic blades of energy arced everywhere, leaving nothing untouched. Several bolts hit the ship though none of them pierced the protective layer of shielding.
“There,” Mira said, pointing to a huge ring of light in front of them.
“I see it,” Magnus said.
“Oh my god,” Warren exclaimed.
A glowing, circular ring of energy stood vertically before them. A dark red tube of pure energy created a perfect circle from within the crater where it rested, reaching straight up into the sky. Massive black storm clouds, now tinted red, rolled into the screen’s field of view, only to be quickly sucked down into a hole of emptiness. Pinpoints of light sparkled out from the hole. Magnus kept his face neutral. He didn’t want his crew to see anything but calm.
Why do the points of light resemble the Orion constellation?
His mind reeled. Was he really seeing stars so close to the Earth’s surface? That, though, would mean he was looking at a doorway into space itself, a hole into the blackness of the universe. Somewhere out there, the other end of the wormhole pumped Earth’s atmosphere into the emptiness of space. He was seeing Orion as if watching it from a television screen but this screen was several hundred feet in size.
The ship lurched forward giving Magnus’ stomach a small jolt, the gravity and inertia generators always an instant too slow. The ship was being pulled toward the wormhole.
“Jules?” Magnus asked, his voice wavering before he could stop it.
“I got it,” Jules said, trying to focus. “But we cannot stay here. I am unable to keep the ship steady at this distance. We are being pulled into that hole and this ship was not designed to operate within--”
She paused.
“--wildly fluctuating pressure zones and these kinds of wind speeds. We can handle the vacuum of space and--”
“We got it, lady,” Brock interrupted. “A lengthy explanation is just wasting our--.”
The ship shifted sideways and flipped, cutting off Brock’s comment. Jules flicked her hands and fingers over the controls, righting the ship again.
“I got it. I got it,” she said, her brow furrowing.
“Holy hell,” Warren said, holding his stomach. “Thank god for our gravity well.”
“How big is that hole?” Brock asked.
Mira hit several buttons on her console.
“It is 576 feet in diameter,” she said.
“Hell, girl, we’ve got plenty of time to fix this then. That’s less than two football fields in size. That’s not going to be a problem,” he said. “Even I know that.”
“Correct.” Mira said, nodding
at Brock. “The hole is not large enough to vent the atmosphere at a dangerous rate. It seems we have plenty of time--”
“Well,” Zara interrupted, “that is true right now but my systems indicate that thing is growing. See?”
Zara’s precise movements caught his attention. Her impish, joking manner was gone now, replaced by a set jaw and a calm focus. She was all business. He could read Mira’s demeanor, too. Her lips were pressed together and her worried brow was similar to Jules’.
“Magnus, that hole is growing! At this rate, it will be tens of miles in diameter in just two hours.” Mira said, her eyes darting over her console.
Zara and Mira were the emotional ones in the group with Seph close behind. Would she be able to hold it together?
“Let’s all take a deep breath and a chill pill. Okay, so it’s a problem but we have two hours to figure it out. Hell, girl, if we can figure this out in just an hour--” Brock said.
Mira shook her head vehemently.
“No, no, no. The loss of atmosphere here will create worldwide weather changes. This is a massive low-pressure zone. Wind speeds near the wormhole are in the hundreds of miles per hour already. Air from all over the planet is slowly moving this way, gaining speed as it draws closer to this thing. As it grows, it will get worse. People in high altitudes will feel it first, finding it more and more difficult to breathe. Radiation from our sun will eventually be an issue. Atmospheric pressure is dropping very slowly planet-wide but it will be at dangerous levels in just fifty minutes. The long-term effects have already started.”
Her eyes did not leave her screen and her lips trembled slightly. It was likely no one else even noticed but he did. Mira wasn’t overreacting. No, her figures were accurate and immutable, even though she spoke in layman’s terms for them.
“Magnus, we have to stop this now. We cannot wait for an hour, not even thirty minutes. Now!” she urged.
“How about we just shoot it?” Brock blurted out.
“We can try,” Jules said, speaking in short bursts as she focused on maintaining the ship’s position. “But honestly... I am having a very hard time... holding this ship in place. We really need... to get... closer if we want a chance at hitting it.”
Jules was completely focused on keeping the ship under control and, even with her fantastic abilities, it was a strain.
“Grep, can you handle the firing controls?” Magnus asked.
“Of course, but if Jules is right, even I won’t be able to hit the portal device.” Grep said.
“What device?” Brock asked.
The main view screen changed. Mira zoomed the picture inward to a blocky, glowing device at the very base of the wormhole. The device rested on the metallic floors of the room that once had contained it. It glowed red like the tube of energy it generated above. The ring’s energy almost completely covered the device, obscuring it from any easy shot.
“Jules, get as close as you can. Give Grep a chance at hitting it.”
The weapon system console lit up as Grep sat down.
“Weapon systems are powering up. Five seconds.” Grep said.
“Moving in now,” she told him.
The ship shook as it closed on the wormhole device. Magnus’ attention went to Jules who was focused on a display just to her left. On it, there was a dot which represented the ship and a superimposed computer-generated weather map of wind speeds and pressure zones. The information updated instantly from the ship’s sensors. Jules compensated the ship’s position by anticipating the wind and air pressure around it.
The ship tipped forward violently, forced even closer to the portal. The view screen jerked downward, showing the ground directly below them. Dirt and earth were getting quickly ripped apart around the metallic floor, vanishing into the ring’s blackness. The ship recovered, moving back into position as Jules’ hands played over the navigation controls.
A blast of laser energy fired as Jules started back. It hit the red tube of energy and continued on through the wormhole and into space. Then another blast as Grep fired again, adjusting his aim. His shot hit the ground fifty feet from its target, a miss. Wind shear forced the ship right and then down. The gravity well adjusted, but the delay was enough to give everyone a brief panic that they were about to hit the ceiling headfirst. He fired again, missing a third time.
“Magnus, I cannot... hold it here... much longer. It is getting... worse,” Jules said, her voice wavering.
“Power systems are holding,” Seph said. “But we certainly cannot do this much longer. The external forces on the ship’s shields and stabilizers will grow beyond our ability to handle them.”
He could feel the tightness in his chest growing.
Hold it together. They need me. The world needs me.
“Pull back,” he ordered. “Get us to a safe spot as close as possible and hold. Zara, get me a layout of that facility. Seph, Grep, Jules and Mira are staying here. The rest of you are with me.”
“With you?” Brock said. “What the hell does that mean? Where are we going?”
Grep started to interrupt but Magnus cut him off.
“We’re going to hit this from two points. We need a ground force that will try to shut it down from the inside and the rest of you will try to figure out a way to shut it down from out here.”
Grep nodded, smiling.
“Good plan, actually. If one group fails, we have a backup strategy. It is likely one group will not make it through this though.”
Always the pessimist.
“Magnus, I have your layout. WSO has it in their database,” Zara said.
“What? How? Why did? Never mind. I’ll ask Alexandria about that later,” Magnus said.
“If there is a later,” Grep responded, almost under his breath.
Seph glared at Grep and he nodded sheepishly at her in response.
Good, let her keep him controlled.
Zara displayed the research facility’s layout at her console. Grep and Warren walked up behind him, standing to his right. Her monitor showed most of the facility was built underground. In fact, the wormhole itself should have been contained in a large, warehouse-sized room, 100 feet down. Instead it stood exposed now, having been ripped apart by the forces of man and nature, leaving a crater in the earth. A greater portion of earth was missing in front of the wormhole than behind it. Most of the facility was still intact with approximately twenty feet exposed. That twenty feet was an underground corridor leading between the wormhole and the complex. It protruded from the ground, suspended in the air.
Lightning continued to dance all around them. Bright flashes of light from the main view screen lit the room but the thunder that usually followed lightning never came, the shields preventing even that sound from reaching them.
“So the wormhole should have been no more than 20 to 30 feet long?” Brock asked.
“Around. Diameter.” Grep corrected.
“Whatever, Brainiac.”
“Yes, Brock,” Zara replied. “Approximately. It grew larger than the room itself. All of that is in pieces now, floating in space.”
“Okay, how do we get in there?” Warren asked.
“It looks like the facility has several entrances,” Zara continued. “All of them north of the wormhole and all of them nearly a mile away. This facility is quite large.”
“Where does that exposed corridor lead?” Warren asked.
Magnus traced the schematic with his finger. The corridor went straight east about 500 feet to a slightly smaller room than the one that had once housed the wormhole device. In it, the schematic was marked ‘Electrical Generator.’ A side corridor halfway between the wormhole room and the generator room led off to the north and into the heart of the complex.
“That is how we get in,” Magnus said. “We can enter through one of the closer entrances to the north and try to reach that electrical generator.”
“Why can’t we go in through this corridor here?” Warren asked, pointing at the exposed section of
the facility.
Jules looked up from her screen, wiping her face with her shirt. A gentle sheen covered her face.
“There is no way we can get that close,” she said calmly, “let alone hold the ship there for you four to get into the corridor. Sorry, Warren.”
“No problem. I understand. Looks like a foot race to get back here. Should be easy enough to destroy it.”
Several people started to respond but Magnus cut them off.
“We’ll worry about the details if we make it there. In the meantime, Jules get us to an entrance. Zara, pick one that is the shortest point to the generator room. Move, people.”
“Wait, my idea didn’t work earlier but how about we shoot the generator?” Brock asked.
“It’s completely covered by nearly 100 feet of earth and housed inside a large room of metal. We don’t have the time to burn through all of that.” Mira told him.
“Fine, can we line up with the corridor’s opening and shoot down the hallway straight into the generator room?” he asked.
“I can’t hold the ship that close to the wormhole.” Jules said. “It would literally be at our backs.”
“Let’s go, then!” Brock said, raising his arms and rising from his chair in a single motion.
Magnus felt the lag in the gravity generator as the ship rotated and accelerated forward.
Why can’t that be instantaneous?
He moved to stand next to Jules’ station. Her hands now strained less to keep the ship stable. The worst of the blackness was behind them but ahead of them loomed massive storm clouds, rain and lightning reaching the horizon. The tension in his neck returned. The problem was growing and had to be fixed immediately.
“The longer we take, the more people die. Perhaps all of humanity,” Grep said.
“Enough,” Seph told him.
“Sorry, I--” he started to say.
She put her hand up and Grep shut his mouth. She followed with another one for Brock.
“And you better not say anything either,” she told him.
“Damn girl, I--”
“Shut it,” she scolded.
“Let’s go,” Magnus ordered.